Das Tanztheremin - A Public Engagement installation by the Somby MusicLab at the Art IN Academia exhibition

Thomas Wolf, a researcher in the Somby MusicLab, developed the public engagement project Das Tanztheremin for the exhibition Art IN Academia. The exhibition took place in early 2018 in the Galeria Centralis, Budapest. Das Tanztheremin is an interactive art installation as well as an experimental paradigm. Installed in exhibition spaces, it invites visitors to create sounds together and allows researchers to test scientific hypotheses about how people coordinate their actions in time, in space and in other domains such as musical pitch and harmony. Das Tanztheremin allows researchers to investigate cognitive mechanisms of social interaction that are both relevant for every-day encounters and artistic collaborations. 

The MusicLab is part of the Social Mind and Body group (SOMBY), led by Natalie Sebanz and Günther Knoblich, which investigates the perceptual, cognitive, and motor processes that underlie social cognition and social interaction. Our take is that individual minds are geared towards understanding others and interacting with others. This is why we study perception, cognition, and action in social context. As a tribute to good old solitary thinking we also study the processes underlying insight in problem solving. 

Thomas Wolf studied Musicology at the University of Vienna and Philosophy of Mind at Copenhagen University, and graduated from the MEi:CogSci program at the University of Vienna. At the CEU he is working on music paradigms in joint action research.